The Cannibal Spirit

by Harry Whitehead

  “Well you have not given me much to use, Mr. Hunt,” says he and suggests maybe I should plead innocent for now, whilst bail was posted. “That at least will give you an opportunity to go home and give some thought to the matter. Perhaps your family may have opinions to offer.” He tells me I can change my plea at a later date, though it might result in a longer sentence.

  “I’ve not money to pay you any further, Mr. Bowser,” I tell him.

  “I’ll not work for nothing,” says he, “but it’s a case I am keen to be involved with. You must understand there are expenses that must be born in any trial.” Anyhow, he says, we’d discuss it later, once I had made my bail.

  Then off he goes and I was left alone. Dust swirled about in the sunlight what flowed in through the only window, high up on one wall. I found myself remembering a shoal of herring I had fished one day. They was being worried at by seals till they spun about, reflecting in the sunbeams so that they seemed a rainbow whirlpool stretching down into the deeps. I flung out my net and drew in hundreds, even as porpoises twisted now amongst them, and killer whales coming last to herd and swing about and throw their tails, so that the stunned herring was hurled up into the air. Seagulls dived and scooped them up. The sun flicked off their scales until it looked as if I was amidst a world of rainbows and diamonds, and me but a tiny part of that great, glorious massacre.

  I thought on how alive and young and brim-filled with the murderous joy of it I’d been. I realized that there was patterns in the world. The dust swirling and the herring doing similar. Science it is, such thinking. But it is religion as well.

  Then John Clough came to lead me, shuffling in my chains, back to the cells.

  I’ll not dwell on those days I spent in jail. Eventually I was up before the judge. Bowser managed to talk me out of getting up right then and there to speak my mind. So instead I held my tongue tight for the time being, and I was bailed to return in just fifteen days. I had to borrow money off Bowser for my fare home.

  “He’s a tough old fish, this judge,” Bowser says to me outside the courthouse. “I would not trust to clemency, should you switch your plea to guilty. Get yourself home, Mr. Hunt, and talk to your family. I can’t think they will want you languishing in prison over some ill-thought-through— and ill-placed—desire to make a statement.”

  He reckoned I’d need some hundreds of dollars for his fees, for transporting witnesses and the like. I says I wasn’t likely to find such an amount. “Then you’ll go to prison, Mr. Hunt,” says he, grim faced like a judge hisself. And so we parted.

  I stood there for some time after he’d gone. Choices must be made, but I had not the wherewithal to make them. My freedom weighed heavy after the many days of my captivity. Even to raise my head so that I might see again the huge, violet plumes of smoke away above the buildings, which showed where was the port—even such tiny motions of will felt hard beyond all measuring. Something was wrong with everything—with my thinking, with my place in things. But I was without the words I needed to give it name.

  I gathered myself and crossed the road to sit upon steps leading down from a covered boardwalk.

  It was late morning. The streets roared all about me. Yet I did feel cocooned, like when I was a child and we’d play in the snow, burying each other under the drifts, with only our eyes and noses showing, until the sounds came like echoes from elsewhere. All was far away, and the city no more than some but dimly recalled dream place of evil intent.

  Someone spoke then, saying, “Do you need something, friend?” I turned to see a man in a tall hat and black longcoat stood before a shopfront that I saw was a undertaker’s. I shook my head. “Well, there’s dosshouses aplenty in Gastown,” the man says, pointing away along the street.

  I had washed my clothes the night before, where I’d been given them back to wear before the judge. But I still made a sorry spectacle and knew it: boots, scruff trousers, and a weathered shirt of no determinate colour, without a jacket. A mismatching tie which Bowser’d brought me to wear. Over my bad eye was a new patch the physician, what had come to examine it in the cells, had given me. He cleaned it up, but he didn’t think I’d see again through it, though he said that miracles had happened in the past and, no doubt, must happen more in times before us.

  I rose from the steps, and stepped out into the traffic towards the docks and home. Luck favoured me, and there was a vessel steaming north that afternoon. I’d half fancied I might finish up aboard the Comox once more, and old Eddlestone cursing me all the way to Alert Bay. But such was not the case. Instead, I’d ship with the Coquitlam.

  I bought half a chicken and a hard-packed ball of rice from a skinny Chinaman with a barrow. I watched as he silently took the abuse of his race from the stevedores he served. I thought, he ain’t so dissimilar to the Indian. Brownskin, second-rate human being.

  I perched on an iron mooring post beside the water, pulling halfheartedly at the chicken, and fingering the rice apart, to fall into the water, the fish rolling over each other to snatch and gulp amidst the city’s garbage bumping there. I watched the steam tugs out in the bay, hauling and butting the lumber towards its final end in the city’s sawmills.

  I saw as well the arrival of the cruise ship the Empress of India, its whistle reverberating around the great bay, its glittering figurehead, its long bowsprits and sloping masts, the slim bows and the overhanging stern so majestic, looming over me like a glacier, and all the people calling out from its decks, the throngs gathering on the shore in their finest costumes, till it seemed the entire city must have turned out to witness its arrival and to celebrate their success in luring such munificence off the world’s oceans.

  I was bustled and cursed out of the way by a stevedore, so that the huge cables could be drawn in with longshore poles and coiled about the mooring posts, one of which I had been sitting upon. I watched the new arrivals from across the Pacific as they poured down the gangplanks to fill yet more the multiplying city.

  When at last it came time to board the Coquitlam, I lay down under the awning and was immediately asleep. I believe I curled up into a ball upon the planking like some lost cub.

  I was three days aboard, the steamer stopping at all its possible ports en route. The money from Bowser was finished. I went hungry, till the lumberman berthed on deck beside me, high in drink and not put off by my silence, brought enough back for the both of us from where he’d hopped ashore at Nanaimo.

  His name was Jack Crabb, out of Evansville, Indiana—“not never looking back”—short three fingers of his right hand after a chain snipped them away, hauling a redwood near Bella Coola. I ate the dried salmon and bread, but refused his offer of liquor. Crabb slapped me on the back and says, “Half my insides is tore out from this shite, spitting blood in mornings. You done right avoiding it.

  “Thought myself pauce of luck, I did,” he goes on, “till I sees you. Pardon me for mentioning, but you is a sorry-looking sleeping Jesus, and I ain’t lying.”

  I had no words for him, though it didn’t seem to bother him none. He burrowed in his pack and drew out a ratty Bay blanket, which he placed across my shoulders. I was near blue with cold from the night before, though I didn’t realize it till after I was so cosseted.

  We sat then in silence together, watching the two dolphins what danced and leapt in the steamer’s wake.

  “Still, there ain’t much you need to get along,” Crabb pipes up at last. “And as to what sort of a man you is: well I seen men say ‘Yes!’ to a question about theyselves and ‘No!’ to the selfsame question the following day— and believe both answers as if they was speaking from their very souls.

  What manner of a man you is ain’t more than a matter of what situation you finds yourself in, day by day by day. And that be the truth, amen.”

  I stepped back onto the cannery jetty at Alert Bay twelve days after I had left it in custody of Woolacott. Eyes followed me along the front till I stood before the greathouse of my dead son, David, what is halfway alon
g the beach. Whispers must have gone ahead, for Abayah was waiting on me at the entrance. She drew me inside, holding hard to my arms.

  We spoke but little. I was overcome and hardly able to walk the few steps to a bed and fall down upon it, before I was asleep. She was by my side when I awoke, her two children owl-eyed behind her. As she prepared food, I took them on my lap beside the fire and spoke a few words in answer to their queries on the speed at which the embers burned, the poor state of my beard, what was under my patch, and when their father was planning on coming back—which finality was more than yet they was able to grasp.

  Later, rested up, bathed, and dressed in David’s clothes, I stood outside Spencer’s door. In truth I did hesitate before knocking. I’d seen my brother-in-law earlier through the open doorway at Abayah’s, stopping a moment as he passed by to peer inside, grim faced. I guessed those who’d seen me on the jetty would have told him of my arrival. Of what might be in his mind, however, I did not know.

  Annie answered the door. “You’ve a hollow look to you, brother,” says she, and tells me I must eat with them.

  “Better see your husband first,” I says, and she nodded, sombre, directing me towards the dining room.

  Spencer had his back to the fire in the grate. He was nursing a brandy glass. “Will you have one?” he says, and I tell him perhaps I will. We watched the bustle of the flames for a time. “You made bail, then,” he says, and I thank him for it. “Though I was navigated into it,” he goes on. “If you will believe it, you’ve Halliday to thank, and the Reverend Hall.” At that I was greatly surprised. Strange enemies indeed! “And Harry spoke quite vehemently on your behalf, so he did. I don’t mind telling you I’d not at first been minded to help.”

  “Anyway,” I says, “my thanks.”

  He asks me what the lawyer said to me and what I planned on doing next.

  So I tell him the lawyer reckoned the case was pretty strong against me.

  “Yet you pleaded not guilty?” says he.

  I tell him I did, but was considering changing my plea when I came to trial. He wanted to know how long I’d be in prison then, and I says there ain’t no precedent to tell me.

  “You’d plead guilty to cannibalism and heathen practices?” he asks me.

  “I may,” says I.

  “Then I’ll not aid you further,” he says, near boiling with his rage again. “You’ve brought disgrace on your family.” He tramped outside, but, a moment later, he was back. “And I’ll trouble you to know I expect to see my money back,” he says. “You’ll not run for the forest.”

  I assured him I wasn’t planning to.

  “Go see your sister,” says he. “Mayhap she can talk some sense into you.”

  So I sat with my sister at the kitchen table, those two women as helps about the house behind us. I could feel their eyes upon me.

  “Your husband’s full of fury at me,” I tell Annie. “Though I don’t blame him for it.”

  “You have made a fool of yourself,” she says, “and of us.”

  “I’ve not money,” I says, “even should I wish to defend myself. And the family treasures taken.” I told her how the lawyer had quoted several hundred dollars as the least amount I’d need.

  “Stanley won’t help you,” she says. “Not again.”

  “Perhaps I’m right for prison,” I says.

  “Perhaps you are,” says she.

  I left the house before dinner was ready and walked out on the beach, slippery with seaweed in the ebb tide. The clouds were breaking in the strong northwesterly what was blowing, and the stars came and went in bursts. It was dangerous, and dark without a moon.

  I heard a seal call, probably from that rock offshore that only shows itself when the tide is low. More than one boat’s had its guts ripped out by that sharp granite.

  Then a voice says, “Seals calling you home?” and Halliday was beside me.

  “I’m of the killer whales,” I tell him.

  “I sometimes wonder if you’re not truly of the seal folk, though. They come ashore on nights like this, do they not, to cause mischief among the people.” He laughed, soft, but I didn’t hear no malice in it. “Truth is,” he says, “I’m glad to see you back, George.”

  “Oh?” says I.

  “Means bail was made and you’ve a chance to defend yourself.”

  “I heard you argued my case to Spencer. I thought you’d rather have me shackled.”

  “I do think you’re bad trouble, George, I won’t deny it. But that’s no reason for you not to see a fair trial.”

  “As long as prison’s at the end of it,” says I.

  But he reckoned the trial was more important than the outcome, giving chance for questions to be raised in public discourse on the way of things. “But, George,” he goes on, “I find, despite myself, that I like you. Always have done. You’ve passion for the welfare of the Indian. I admire your sentiment. It’s just you are misguided in what you believe is best for their survival.”

  “And my going to jail will help you prove it?” says I.

  But, says he, hanging to the old ways does nothing but cut off the Indian further from the fruits of progress.

  “So you’d tear out the Indian soul to safeguard it?” says I.

  “What you call a soul I call but society,” says he. “And society must move with the times. I’m more interested in the Indian body, which must be fed, must work for its survival, must become a part of the larger body of Canada.”

  “I’d see Canada recognize those what was here first.”

  But the country has moved too far for that, says he, and I saw he was much moved. “Damnit, George, I am familiar with the injustice. But this is the reality. Old ways fall behind and are lost.”

  “Old they may be,” says I, “but they’re also who we are. They’re what we have left against despair.”

  “You say ‘we,’ George, but look at you! Your sister’s married to the wealthiest white man in the area. Your father was factor to the Company, and you’re employed by famous scientists from the great universities of America! You are a success, man. Gods, you’re also Indian aristocracy, if you’d have it that way round. You’re an Indian success!” He paused to catch his breath then. I had no words to speak to him, for my mind was a-spin at what he said.

  “Chieftains and medicine men and berry gathering!” Halliday goes on. “Do you think the world has time for such things? The Indian has to accept what is happening around him.”

  I was quiet then. I was just back from the city, after all. I had seen the future. It was true.

  “I must be back to my wife,” I says at last. And I realized that was about all I wanted at that moment. Old Francine beside me.

  “We’ve convincing witnesses, George,” says Halliday. “Convincing evidence. You’ll not get off these charges. Yes, go home. See what’s there. Look on the poverty, the loss, the misery. Ask yourself if this is what you wish for your people.”

  “What of my family’s property?”

  “They’ll be returned in time,” says he. I ask him where they are, but all he’ll say is “Safe,” even when I press him on it till I am quite irate.

  “Damn you, Halliday,” I tell him.

  “No,” says he, “damn you, Hunt! Damn you for not seeing the truth. Damn you for not being the advocate for change you might have been. You think you stand for your people. Instead you stand for their doom.” And he turned away and walked off along the beach into the darkness.

  I heard him stop after some yards. “One other thing,” says he. “Do not think I am unaware of what it is that Charley and Harry are up to.”

  “What’s that?” I says, baffled. But he was gone.

  I spent a wretched night. Halliday’s words plagued me and I didn’t know that he weren’t right in all he’d said. I asked Annie where Harry and Charley had gone, but she told me they were away back to Rupert.

  The next morning I hitched a ride north on a fishing boat skippered by a cousin of mine, w
ho made show of keeping busy through the voyage, without no time for conversation.

  The crew were mostly Japaners, with three Kwagiulths who also kept clear of me, muttering together and one joking loud enough for me to hear the white word cannibal, with low laughs to follow. I sat brooding at the prow, wondering at myself, at who I was. My great plan, boosted so in my healing of Harry, to be the voice of the people. It all seemed, then, the very depths of foolishness. I’d no money to help myself even should I wish to hope. Vancouver had put paid to all such fantasies I might have had of making a defence what justified the ways of the Kwagiulth.

  Anyways, the tide was full at Rupert. The boat left me right on the jetty. I stood for a time out there, taking in the details of my home. It weren’t no more than a month since I had left for Teguxste. That so short a time had passed seem scarce credible.

  The sun broke through the clouds and the roofs did glisten then with dew water. I smelled first the salt wind and the sweet seaweed. But, after, I smelled the reek of the middens what are strewn so casual behind the houses. I saw the dogs scrawning amongst them, sores on their bodies, bickering over fish heads. Three of the children ran naked along the plankway, their bodies soiled, their hair in cankerous braids. Old man Moody was squatting on the beach, oozing soft shit onto the stones.

  Halliday’s words kept at me till I wondered if I might be better just waiting for the next boat to moor up, stepping onto its deck, and never coming back.

  But in the end I walked shorewards and along till I stood outside my home. I looked on my ancestry what is written on the great pole there. The paint is chipped and weathered now already, though it ain’t been up so many years. It seemed then as if it didn’t have no import, mouldering relict of a dead-end time, like a rabbit born with three legs that has somehow lasted to maturity, till, at last, a wolverine does bury fangs into its neck to bring about its rightful end. So the white fangs at our necks. Fangs made out of engines, great ships on the oceans, streetcars, libraries of books, museums. But even as I thought those things, they shamed me out of words, so that I hung my head as I stepped inside.